


A Good Place for Letting Go

by Sour_Idealist



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Scotland, Setting as Third Character, Sexuality Crises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-15
Updated: 2012-07-15
Packaged: 2017-11-09 23:50:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/459880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sour_Idealist/pseuds/Sour_Idealist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three thousand miles from home, Dean admits he's been running.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Good Place for Letting Go

**Author's Note:**

> First off: This is a side story to something that, er, hasn't been written yet, which is the reason for a few AU details left unexpounded upon herein. 
> 
> Second, which should be first: infinite, infinite thanks to [Sara](rubikovs.tumblr.com) for her help and encouragement.
> 
> Third: warnings for **internalized homophobia, androcentrism, and everything else you'd expect to find inside Dean's head.**
> 
> Lastly: okay, this needs a little background. I was recently lucky enough to spend a week on a tiny island in the north of Scotland, and it was... well. It was nothing I can sum up neatly, for a start. But I still want, more than anything, to share what it was like, and this is the only way I know how: to work it into a story. So I sent some of my favorite characters there.
> 
> I hope I managed to let some sense of it shine through.

It’s ten o’clock and the sky is killer, all pearly peach and shimmering clouds and a brilliant path across the sea. It’s sissy stuff, girly stuff, but Dean’s the only one out here but the cliffs and a few halfheartedly complaining goats, and somehow it’s hard to bring himself to care. So: the sunset’s gorgeous, so many shades of cream and pale bright gold that it feels like it’s going to kill him if he tries to see them all. A while back, he hooked up with a girl in Minnesota with bright eyes and a necklace she wore, one he remembers because she caught at his wrist and made him ease her shirt over it gently, minding the cord, keeping it locked around her neck. He’s done the same thing with his amulet a thousand times. Point is, she told him later that the pendant was freshwater pearl, a strange crooked shape on a thin blue cord, kind of glowing in between her collarbones – the sky is that color tonight, as the sun sinks into the northern sea.

Dean tucks his chin into his collar – however warm the sunset looks, the wind is cold – and picks his careful way over another rock, another, closer to the shoreline until he slithers into a tide-pool that crashes up around his ankles. The hollow is deep – up to his shoulders – and the sky’s still glowing over the edge, making the whole thing seem a little like a secret. From just about any way but up, you’d never know this gap was here except for, well, Dean sticking out.

He picks his way between the slippery rocks still sticking up, splashing a bit, and as he glances at the sky again – more pale-gold than pearl-colored, now – he thinks, _I wish Mom were here._

The gut-clenching sickness doesn’t come, doesn’t hit him at the back of his knees or burn his eyes; it’s just a kind of ache, like an overworked muscle losing its kinks, almost sweet at the back of his throat. It’s strange, and it lingers as he scrabbles out of the tide-pool pocket, finds his footing on the edge. Somewhere between that and the next sticking-up boulder that makes up the shore, he starts to sing under his breath: “When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me…”

He’s not five feet away from the edge of the water when he catches sight of someone else out here – someone with short brown hair and a long tan coat, sitting with his arms wrapped round his knees, staring out to see.

“Hey, Cas!” Dean calls, moving a little quicker, nearly falling on his ass when he forgets to watch where he puts his feet. Cas twitches, turns slow and creaky; he’s barely pulled himself away from the sunset by the time Dean settles next to him, ignoring the way the sea-spray on the rocks is going to soak into his jeans. Cas’s eyes are a little too bright, none of the comfortably strange crazy-intense focus he usually has, and Dean reaches for his shoulder without thinking. “Cas, are you all right, man?”

Cas nods, slowly, blinking hard. “I am.” Dean raises his eyebrows. “Truly. I…” He turns, looks out at the water, relaxing a little bit under Dean’s hand. It’s only then Dean notices he wasn’t particularly tense in the first place. “Thank you,” Cas says, staring at the sea. “For bringing me here.”

Dean rocks back on his heels, shrugs awkwardly, reclaiming his hand, settling it first on one patch of slick boulder, then another. “Thank miss Hell’s Bells,” he says, then realizes he’s actually using that stupid nickname where Bela won’t hear it and roll her eyes; he decides not to think too hard about that one just now. “Or her contact, I guess. I just dragged your ass out here like always.”

“Exactly,” Cas says, still watching the sun shine off the water. “Dean, I…” He licks his lips. “Never mind. I just mean to say – this is a good place. I like it here.”

“Well.” Dean clears his throat, forces himself to still his hand, not too far from the edge of Cas’s coat. He shrugs. “Good.” Something makes him ask – maybe just the smell of the sea – “This a human kind of liking that we’re talking about, or some angel thing?”

“Both,” Cas says, almost lost in the crashing surf, and tilts his head. The falling glow catches his hair. “I’m not sure how to explain it, especially not…”

“To a sacrilegious bastard like me?” Dean slides a grin sideways like an offering, lifting a shoulder; Cas echoes the gesture, shaking his head.

“To someone who isn’t looking for… a presence.” His voice catches, and he coughs. “There’s something here. A great deal here. A sense of, well.” He tilts his head back, closing his eyes. “What Heaven was supposed to be like, you might say. Or…”

“Your dad,” Dean guesses.  Castiel exhales.

“Yes.”

Dean licks his lips, looks back to the glowing burst of brilliance in the sky. The clouds shine in the light, the light catches on the waves, the waves rush against the shore, the shoreline curls and staggers up into the cliffs, the cliffs reach their rough jagged edges towards the sky. Dean stares across the water and says, “Yeah.” Nothing else.

The gold is melting itself steadily into a kind of orange-rose that shouldn’t even be possible, now, and Dean wraps one arm around his knees and watches: a cloud that looks a little bit like the _Enterprise_ , a few silhouetted birds circling towards the cliffs, the sun’s bright path along the water. He almost doesn’t notice when Cas’s hand settles over his, one rough callus nudging at his wristbone. Almost.

“Cas, what –” he starts, finds Cas gazing at him in that weird way he has that Dean somehow thinks of as his angel look: like he’s wiser than Dean is, deeply older, sad for him in this strange aching way that sets Dean’s teeth on edge. And he’s about to pull away when Cas’s grip slackens, and he looks at the rock beneath them, which – it occurs to Dean – is probably soaking both his last dry pair of jeans and Cas’s coat. Cas has kind of freakishly noticeable eyebrows – it’s one of those weird things about him, one of the ones that aren’t angelic leftovers, like the way he can snore without being annoying and make just eating something hilarious – okay, the point is. Eyebrows, freakishly noticeable, and they draw in on themselves somehow when he’s upset, and they’re drawn in like that now.

Dean tilts his head back and watches the colors burst above the ocean, swallowing, and lets Cas hang on to him. The sky is just getting more and more stupidly brilliant, gold-orange and rose and purple and red like a freaking postcard or something, except no postcard Dean’s ever seen has stretched out this wide and endless, and the wind and the irregular gurgle of water feels so much a part of it that he can’t imagine any of this still. Jesus Christ, what the hell is he even thinking about.

“I’m tired,” Cas says suddenly, several rich shadings later. “Very tired.”

“Mmm?” Dean looks over, noticing again the warm fine-sandpaper roughness of Castiel’s palm over his knuckles, and trying not to. “What, you wanna go back?”

“Not yet,” Cas says, end of the word getting lost in a small yawn that makes the word _kittenish_ float to the top of Dean’s head. He resolutely ignores it. “You know, this is the first time I haven’t minded being tired.”

“Really?” Dean frowns, looks back to the horizon line, suddenly glad for an excuse to look away. “Huh.” He remembers the way Cas always passes out in the back of the Impala, always seems to stay up later than him and Sam – armed with a book or some strange TV show – the way they always freaking find him sleeping in his coat. For months. _I’m sorry, dude_ , he wants to say. The water gurgles, the wind whips at him, and – oh, what the hell.

“I’m sorry, dude.”

“Thank you,” Cas says quietly, and drops his head against Dean’s shoulder; Dean jumps, nearly knocking him off, which earns him a sleepy noise of complaint that might have a “Hey” buried somewhere in its mangled vowels. When the hell did they get close enough for that, anyway?

Well, whatever. Cas is tired, he’s still a little weird about human stuff – he gets how most things work, how food works, and contact, jokes, sleep, all that, but he’s sometimes not so great about the when and the where and the why. He decides Dean’s shoulder is the best pillow available for his first non-resentful nap in all eternity – okay. Fine. Dean can go with that.

The left part of Cas’s coat is kind of falling off his shoulder, flapping in the wind and slapping a little bit against his ribs, and Dean untangles their hands, reaches over his shoulders to tug it in, smooth the edge over Cas’s shoulder. Cas, the heavy bastard, takes that opportunity to burrow a little more solidly against Dean’s side, leaning into the crook of his arm with a contented little sigh. “Aw, c’mon –” Dean complains, and Cas tilts his head back, irritated and sarcastic-looking even though he hasn’t said a damn thing. There are pieces of being human that Dean wishes gave Cas a little more trouble. Also: shit, he looks beat.

Also, the wind is freaking cold, tugging all the blood in Dean’s body into his tingling cheeks, and Cas, in addition to freakily resembling a whole assortment of small fuzzy animals, is _warm_.

Dean rubs a little awkwardly at Cas’s shoulder, not thinking too hard about it, and watches the sky shift from brilliant-bright to thin delicate watercolor-shades. It’s maybe up there with his baby shining in the sunlight and Sammy laughing at sparklers and Lisa tickling Ben on the lawn, as far as beautiful crap that he’s seen goes.

The sun’s vanished under the water and there’s more and more lilac and blue seeping into the sky when Cas lets slip a noise that’s definitely the start of a snore, and Dean laughs and shakes him softly, ruffling his hair. “C’mon, let’s introduce you to the miracles of sleep in an actual bed.”

“I don’t want to,” Cas mumbles, sounding like it’s more out of habit than anything, and Dean’s still laughing as he gets a grip on Cas’s elbow and drags him up. “Dean, I’m going to be _all right._ ”

“Sure you are,” Dean says, figuring Cas is still halfway asleep, and gives him another little shake. “Okay, man, there are about eight hundred slippery-ass rocks between us and the grass here, so I’m gonna need you at least a little bit awake, all right?” He keeps hold of Cas’s elbow, easing him off the boulder they’ve been perching on. The water’s risen a little bit, but not enough to really matter. “I am _not_ hauling you out of here with a broken ankle, come on.”

Cas is a little steadier on his own feet by the time they make it to the grass, at which points the hazards move from breaking a leg to a shoeful of sheep crap – which, okay, gross, but borrowing a hose for a while is a lot better than hauling ass to a hospital that’s several billion gallons of water away. Feet solidly on the road, Cas shakes off Dean’s hand, and Dean’s about to put a little space between them when Cas’s knuckles bump into Dean’s, thumb catching hesitantly at one finger. Their hands swing with the next step, and this time Cas is definitely trying to catch hold, and Dean has to stop in his tracks, closes his eyes.

“Cas,” he says. Castiel stops a foot ahead, turns back to him.

“I’m sorry,” he rasps, half angry, half guilty, and Dean cannot fucking deal with that, not now, not –

“I’m just gonna,” he starts, jerking his head towards the hills behind him, not even a freaking clue what he’s talking about, “real quick, I’ll meet you back at the cottage, I’ll –”

He coughs, turns tail, and flees.

Three fucking vertical crags later, he sinks on his ass into the heather – which is way more comfortable than a bunch of bushes have any right to be, he notices distantly – and stares over the next heap of rock at the stubbornly lingering remains of the sunset, swallowing again and again and again. Somewhere along the way he started muttering a slow endless stream of curses under his breath, _shit shit fuck shit fuck shit cocksucking shit fuck, son of a fucking bitch, fuck…_

The wind whips the words out of his mouth, makes his out-of-breath gasps hurt a little, and he shivers and tugs his jacket closer and makes himself breathe slow, try to calm down just a little. The stars aren’t out yet, there are tufts of wool nodding on the ends of some thistles like weird fluffy flowers a few feet away, and it feels like he’s the only one in the world for miles. It’s bullshit, of course, but it makes it all a little better.

Okay. Facts, facts other than the way the hills slope up. Point one: he’s a slut, has been since kissing stopped being gross at about nine, and he enjoys it, has enjoyed it for about that long. Point two: with women, nice and straight and normal; he’s got all kinds of interest in a nice pair of tits and absolutely none of it is faked, ever has been. He thinks that over – Cassie’s fervent ferocious mouth and gentle hands, Lisa’s inventive playfulness, Anna’s bright laugh and dancer’s rhythm, Rhonda’s coaxing fingers and reassuring murmurs, the way Jo’s smile and swing to her hips would always kill him – he likes women, always has.

Point three: despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, _he’s a fucking fag._

“I don’t,” he mutters into his palms, shaking his head. “This fucking…”

Okay, theoretically, both are an option. Megan Fox married a dude and still wants to date Angelina Jolie. Hell, Bobby had that whole thing with Crowley that Dean doesn’t want to know about, seriously. Stuff like that. But – not him. Not him. Not. Fucking. Him.

But.

He lifts his head, flops onto his back and stares up at the fading tints of the sky, wishing the sweet-smelling heather would open up and swallow him, wishing for a nice distracting demon to leap off the edge of the cliffs and try to eat his face, anything at all.

But he’s completely fucking stupid over Cas, stupid like he was over Cassie Robinson, and that’s not even the worst of it. It’s that he fucking knows why he keeps watching Dr. Sexy whenever the fucking show is on. It’s that Gordon Walker looked at him over a table in Red Lodge and said _wanna get out of here_ and Dean just nodded before his brain caught up with his dick and he couldn’t stand up fast enough – hell, everybody had their exceptions, a hand’s a hand, and he owed Gordon for a few good rounds and some info, right? And then there’s a dozen different high-school sub-bleachers incidents that he always filed under ‘just messing around,’ there’s the truck-stop cash exchanges and the way some of the guys there made him ache and his brain buzz even without the promise of a hot meal for him and Sammy afterwards. There’s the awkward jerk-off fantasies that started vague and ended up with Victor Henriksen shoving him against a wall, there’s the way he’s flirted his way past a few cute men in his time and it’s always been fun in a strange ignored way, there’s…

He is not fucking drunk enough for this, and none of this is going to vanish until he can get somewhere with a flask, either.

The hills stretch out around him, ancient and endless, and he sighs, dragging his hands over his face again. Okay. Okay. This is what it is. This is… this _is_. It is. He can be a man about this. Somehow.

He watches the colors dim over the hills for a long, long time.

When he finally stands up, joints creaking, it’s because he’s cold, itchy-nosed, and starting to wonder if his ass is actually going to fuse to the ground. The heather rustles underfoot – well, actually, around his ankles, deeper in places, he’s sinking into the stuff like it’s mud – and the island stones are cold and somehow reassuring under his hands as he scrabbles up and down, trying to retrace his steps, focusing on the cold night air and the way the world, or at least this bit of it, has stubbornly refused to actually turn upside down.

This time he’s calm enough to actually try going around some of the most blatantly impassable parts, and he slithers down onto the road a few yards behind where he started, so focused on his feet that he almost doesn’t notice Cas –

“What the hell, man,” he gasps, a little out of breath, moving a little faster. “Which part of ‘go back to the cottage’ sounded like ‘stand around and freeze your ass off,’ huh?”

Cas looks at him like he’s a moron, which Dean ignores by habit and then pauses to examine: okay, Cas isn’t going to just waltz off and leave him when Dean goes crashing off into the hills of Scotland visibly losing his shit. Okay. That’s... well, that’s. Okay.

Dean pauses next to Cas, staring down the road to the cottage Bela rented for them, and holds his hand a little bit out, palm cupped, fingers splayed. He waits, wind raising goosebumps on the nape of his neck, bile churning in his throat. He can feel Cas looking at him, guarded, careful, warning. Dean tucks his chin into his collar, glances sideways – yep, exactly the look he was expecting – and nods infinitesimally, breath shallow and slow.

Cas’s hand settles around his.   


End file.
